Tag Archives: mural

DC has some great street murals. From U Street, to Adams Morgan, to H Street, and parts elsewhere, DC has quite a respectable display of interesting and fun public art. And they make for some great photos.

Evegophotos’ shot above is a great example of what a photographer can get while incorporating a mural. The swirling colors converging on the artist helps the viewer’s eye explore the entire picture. Also, you don’t get a sense of the scale of the art until you notice the artist…standing on a ladder and he’s still only half way up the mural! Throw in the great colors and this is quite the photo. Nicely done.

From a lofty brick throne, a voluptuous redhead rules over Adams Morgan, watching and goading all manner of revelry like a contemporary Doctor T.J. Eckleburg. Her territory spans the 18th Street strip; her image an iconic symbol of throbbing crowds, vodka cranberries, and Jumbo Slice pizza.

But just two blocks away from her Madam’s Organ palace stands evidence of a rich heritage that long precedes her reign. Near the corner of 18th and Adams Mill (and now overlooking a Zipcar parking lot), a community has danced, sung, painted and played in the faces of danger and greed for over thirty years, their history preserved in a three-story mural titled “A People without Murals is a Demuralized People.”

Originally painted in 1977 by Chilean brothers and artists “Caco” (Carlos) and Renato Salazar (the first of whom studied at the Corcoran and founded the now-defunct Centro de Arte organization), the work is touted as one of the oldest and largest of DC’s few remaining Latino murals, the last beacon of a wider Latino artistic movement in the city, according to Quique Aviles.

I was walking with my lovely wife to get some Ethiopian food in Adams Morgan yesterday when I saw this mural on the side of Mama Ayesha’s restaurant at 1967 Calvert Street, NW. There’s Mama Ayesha posing in front of the White House with all the presidents from Ike to Obama. And notice the motif of Ike being in front of an autumn scene, symbolizing death, and Obama near a sunrise, possibly symbolizing the dawning of the age of Aquarius. It gives me hope, I guess, or maybe some other single-syllable word relating to my wishes for the future.

Mostly what this mural does for me is make me wonder why Rich Little stood in for George H.W. Bush. Also, why is Johnson holding a book like that? To hide his presidential woody, perhaps? Go check it out and if someone asks why you are staring at it so long, just say that you are trying to figure out why LBJ is smiling like that.